[Chile, Privacy] Biometric Check During Mail Delivery

From:
andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date:
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 21:06:56 -0300

I live in Santiago, Chile, and just received an Amazon delivery, via
Landmark postal. I don't know what company handles the delivery
locally, but the delivery person carried a plastic tray that held a
smartphone and a fingerprint reader. He asked for my RUT (the state
ID number, used throughout Chilean society as a way of identifying
people, and quite a normal request when a registered package is
delivered), entered that number into the phone, which then paused
(making a request to a server for appropriate data?) before prompting
me to place my index finger on the reader. Apparently that validated
that I was who I claimed to be and I received the package.
You may wonder where the fingerprint data comes from. A similar
process is used to identify users when claiming medical insurance here
(eg when paying for a visit to the doctor). So perhaps that company
is now sharing data? Or maybe this is separate and this first scan
was not verification, but entering me into a new database? Unlike the
medical insurance readers, this reader had no disclaimer or small
print with details of who was recording the data, or what conditions I
was implicitly agreeing to.
(Our identity cards also carry fingerprint data, but I am pretty sure
that is a thumb print, which has legal conotations here. For example,
at a notary, I have to both sign and thumb-print important documents).
Andrew